


To the Center of the City in the Night

by aishiteita



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Beat Generation, Friends to Lovers, I Tried, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Recreational Drug Use, Slow Burn, Substance Abuse, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2019-07-05 06:12:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15857844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aishiteita/pseuds/aishiteita
Summary: Joshua Hong invited three of his childhood friends from South Korea to Columbia University, New York.The year was 1949.This was a beat generation and you had to fight with ink-stained hands to stay inebriated.





	1. Breathe the Burn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [newvision](https://archiveofourown.org/users/newvision/gifts).



> ra........ hello ra we dont talk often but ... i see u on my notifs all the time u r truly a mutual i love n would LOVE LOVE LOVE to talk to more ???????
> 
> i want u to know that ure great, ur love n enthusiasm for jww and the lads .. its so goddamned cute and amazing like !!!! yo!!!!!!! and i want u to know that ure kicking uni BUTT ok !! ure doing fucking amazing and im sure things will only get better and kinder from here on out!
> 
> i dont know if this was exactly the beat au u were looking for, i Tried to add shenanigans in, and then i got carried away like the Fool i am..  
> but i hope u like it all the same! i hope that uh. this Vague University Setting somewhat cheers u up n provides u w entertainment!!! <333
> 
> ps: dw yall this fic is completed im just formatting everything to become chapters dkjhglshglke  
> and... any mistakes......... pls point it out or not hhh i was too busy to have a beta for this and yk what! this is what it is ! WOOT

**August 1952**

Right under _Beta Theta Pi_ 's garish alcove were a throng of drunk bystanders—

"Get _down_ , Jun, _DOWN!_ "

—a gun, just fired and hazardously falling onto asphalt. The shell was nowhere in sight. Two frat-brothers were beating each other into a pulp.

"Everybody shut the _fuck_ up and _stay in the house!_ "

A boy was whimpering in cold sweat, blood gushing out of a hole in his arm. Another boy rushed to stop the bleeding with a tie.

Enter red-blue lights and sirens—Wonwoo watched in paralyzed rapture as bodies rushed past him like an ocean wave during high tide—arms and sweat and beer and _Soonyoung where's Soonyoung_ —

 

 

Fall, crash, stomp stomp _trample crack—_

—the color black smelled like dirt, grass, and dried-up gum.

**15 th July 1954  
Seoul, Gyeonggi-do**

Dear Jun,

The return hasn't been kind on us; our neighbor is some depraved hawk, circling circling circling us and you wonder, old pal, when she'll snap her neck from this almost perverse vigil; we laugh behind her back.

Tensions aren't as high in the rural towns, but Wonwoo couldn't stay in Changwon without driving himself insane—"the words have to come out!" he said and the words did. Prof. Park still refuses to clear his paper, though. Shame. I've been publishing small paperbacks; very small, very Penguin sans the culture, full of little stories of when Bill got high with Shua-hyung. The purists would burn them and pray for me. It's borderline fetishistic on my part and if there's one thing the Americans can take home from us it is fetish without the phallus. Getting worshipped is an equivalent or dare-I-say, a more powerful sensation than that of a fuck. (Kidding! Never.) 

But things are good! Things are well. Wonwoo misses you and Joshua dearly.  
Write soon! We await.

PS: do you see the structure of this letter? Wonwoo dared me to write a _sijo_ but I got lazy. You take it up.

Much love,  
Soonyoung.

 

 

**I.**

**_Breathe the Burn_ **

 

**December 1949**

"Are you wearing my good tie?"

Wonwoo flinched at Soonyoung's entrance, face quickly schooled to be devoid of guilt as he resumed tying the silk that definitely wasn't his around his neck. "We agreed to share, didn't we?"

"That's the only silk tie I have," Soonyoung murmured with more bite than Wonwoo would consider comfortable. His fingers faltered. "People will still be sober when we get there, and I need to look good. C'mon, you don't need that tie, _I_ do."

The slight whine that creeped into Soonyoung's tone didn't go unappreciated; Wonwoo would be ticked off if he couldn't hold onto the promise of free acid in due time. He sighed instead. "You're plenty good-looking, Soon-ah. Plenty." He unwound the tie from his collar and handed it over to Soonyoung anyway, who received it with an eager palm and a placating grin.

"No, you are." For something that was bought by Soonyoung, the tie could pass as something modest if one glossed over the gaudy blue-red pattern on its very end—Soonyoung told him it was a subliminal message for those who mattered. "Here," Soonyoung said with cheer, pacing across the room to Wonwoo's closet. He picked out a turtleneck; gray and plain, hem resting at a level that wasn't too low nor too high; tattered when looked at for too long.

"This looks good on you," Soonyoung said, almost gasping, really. Wonwoo couldn't quite tell if Soonyoung was just feigning enthusiasm to downplay the tiff about his tie earlier, or if he actually found the turtleneck appealing; either way, Wonwoo hoped it was fondness that he heard in Soonyoung's soft voice.

He gently took the turtleneck; his fingers didn't touch Soonyoung's in the act.

The smallest of sparks made the biggest of fires. "I'll wear this, then."

Rabbits.

Another rabbit, overlapping largely with the one that came before it.

And another. They wouldn't stop. Somewhere in the wall, Wonwoo thought. If he could just patch up that one part of the wall, they would finally stop—

"Watson, what are you doing?"

The muddled audio of his own dull laughter and Soonyoung's unintelligible grumbling next to him stood no chance against the clarity of Joshua's voice. Point: _voice_. Wonwoo decided to not respond to the name because _Watson_ was beyond atrocious in any state of consciousness.

"Watson," Joshua called again. Wonwoo was half tempted to slur back _Jisoo!_ to him. Thankfully, Joshua was a fast learner. " _Wonwoo._ "

Names aside, Wonwoo just thought Joshua's voice sounded so much better in Korean—English rolled off his tongue with such precision and awareness to the point where it was inhuman, almost. "'sup, Shua- _hyung_?"

"Don't say that."

A boy.

And another boy, holding his hand now, and there were legs everywhere; limbs all haphazardly thrown together and they were all together, all kissing one another, all searching and lost and mouths seeking, finding, finding, _searching_ —

"Would you kiss me?"

Ceramic made for terrible walls, was Wonwoo's idle thought as the seconds pause. They were all cramped in this bathroom—Joshua, Soonyoung, and Wonwoo himself—in this bathroom that someone must've thrown up in some moments ago, all smoke and rust and mold and cheap cologne. He could hear everything though, Soonyoung's breath hitching behind the gas mask, how his own question echoed and would not leave before the smoke around them settled. Impossible, because he was barely halfway through his joint and Soonyoung was being so rhythmic in his little attempt of death, hoping the gas would put him out this time. With friends like these, you had to learn to tell time in breaths, footsteps, sighs. Joshua exhaled loudly as if out of mercy.

"Not you, no."

One puff of the joint, and one step forward from Joshua. Wonwoo tried to search for forgiveness in his face—in his unbearably perfect, overly familiar yet wholly alien face that he thought he knew. He had missed it so much. Junhui and one of Ginsberg's boys barged into the bathroom as a saving grace, whisking a not-inebriated-enough Joshua into their wobbly arms to leave Wonwoo alone with his neverending thoughts and a sleepy-eyed Soonyoung.

A muffled sentence came from behind the mask. "Can't hear you," Wonwoo huffed with another hit from his joint. It was now short enough to heat up his fingertips. "Gimme the gas."

Soonyoung passed the mask over to Wonwoo, who clumsily stubbed out the end of his joint against the sink above him. He took the mask and tumbled into the tub to cradle the gas canister. "I said," Soonyoung slurred, "it's all kinda unfair."

Joshua was no stranger to intimacy—night one in Columbia, and they already gained the privilege of a first-class viewing to how well he could touch another body without taking anyone's clothes off. Three stupid fools from across the ocean who had never even kissed a girl; they couldn't look away. It was an odd reckoning that they never knew they needed; realization grown old once they got used to holding the idea in their heads; and god. God, were they held. Held in a deceptively dull rapture that was hot, too hot, scalding hot and they wanted it all. They wanted this one boy who they once knew, they wanted him in ways they couldn't yet articulate, they needed him for they wanted and thus they needed, and no one was unaware. Desire was a conscious decision amongst the three of them.

Wonwoo thought he saw himself in Soonyoung's dopey gaze, head lolled back as his neck rested uncomfortably against the edge of the tub.

_and it is you—_  
 _eternal husband o mine; the forever_  
 _loved, rival, liters_  
 _of your love surely equivalent_  
 _to mine,_  


_it would only be fair for us_   
_to fall together._   
_this is our newfound peace._

**February 1950**

"Are you telling me that not a single one of these white boys are capable of getting their own drugs?"

Soonyoung's cackle at Wonwoo's little fit catalyzed Junhui's own whopping laugh, bigger than the man himself. Joshua shushed them half-heartedly, the rental Jaguar's windows rolled all the way down because it'd be too warm otherwise, their alien faces glowing under the stark streetlamps for cops to see.

Wonwoo said it was an unnecessarily evil way to haze, but Joshua found it an opportunity to get into the _New Vision_ , as he creatively put it. The inner circle. Burrough couldn't risk sending out Kerouac or Ginsberg for they were _too hot in the blood, they only know how to fight_ —which Wonwoo called bullshit on because it was just a pretty way of saying that most of Ginsberg's bunch were city boys; they were comfortable and too cushy in their seats, and there was no greater risk in errands than clueless naivetes used to the big lights.

"It's not a hard job, Watson." Joshua was at ease as they drove down Midtown, just past the cathedral. "Just a lil' pick-up, drop-off, done." He leaned back to grin brightly at Wonwoo. "Unfortunately for him, Burroughs has a bunch of underaged children as peers."

 _And we are disposable despite being the same age_ , Wonwoo didn't say. That was a fight for another time. Soonyoung smiled, quiet and undiscernible what with all their noise, but Wonwoo saw. Wonwoo could always see when Soonyoung was being discreet; he would even say delicate. There was gratitude in his face. Wonwoo stared for just a couple seconds longer while Joshua prattled on about the drugs, his papers—things.

He could afford one evening without rising up against the noise.

***

 _Clack clack clack—ting!_ went his typewriter along with the contents of his skull. The sun had set and Junhui was still typing away at this _terribly important report that Shua-hyung really needs, please?_ and of course, Wonwoo couldn't say no.

"Next ribbon's on you," Wonwoo quipped as a warning. Junhui waved him off with a vacant smile.

"Almost done, Wonwoo."

Wonwoo paced about his room, ink getting on his clammy fingers as he turned the pages over and over, making sure his poem was as impeccable as it could be because he had to show Ginsberg that no, he wasn't the only one capable of a genius rebellion. Rebellion did not need the word _phallus_ every two lines.

"Rebellion also doesn't need you employing another language to secretly call someone out as a diaper boy," Soonyoung laughed from Wonwoo's corner bed. "Now stop mulling over your poem, it's fine, and help me with this paper that's actually worth marks."

"No, Jun is being an ass—"

"Like you wouldn't do the same." Soonyoung dipped more tobacco onto his lip, waving his paper obnoxiously as he did so. "Get! Over! Here!"

And this was their typical evening whenever Joshua wasn't being obsessively posh while rapping on their door to announce yet another party going on in so-and-so's building, in a such-and-such jazz bar where the women wore little and the men touched more than they stared. Junhui finished his paper (for Joshua) with one final _ting!_ of the machine and strode off to Joshua's room right at the end of the hall with a million-watt smile, leaving Wonwoo alone with Soonyoung (as they always were, always alone together in the end) on his squeaky bed.

"We should head downtown," Soonyoung decided, ignoring Wonwoo and his hands full of paper. "We've nothing on tomorrow, right? Tonight is the night, Wonwoo-yah, tonight we are free from Shua-hyung!"

The lack of Junhui's reckless use of his typewriter left the room spacious yet invasive, every sound amplified tenfold, and Wonwoo thought the feeling of someone lying next to him in bed too foreign. "You say it like it's a bad thing to be infatuated." He tried to distance himself from Soonyoung without the other knowing. Soonyoung let him, sinking further into the bed in a petty response to take up even more space and get closer.

"It is a bad thing, yes, for us to like him," Soonyoung elaborated in his constant sing-song. He spoke with tenderness unlike those of princesses, but more reminiscent of playgrounds and candle-lit bedsides. It didn't match the stab of his words at all. "But you like the roll, don't you, Wonwoo? You like staying here, waiting for pity gazes from anyone who bothers to spare you any. You _want_ him to pity you."

The stars were nowhere to be seen—New York was too bright. Light bounced off his window to highlight the slant of Soonyoung's forehead, eyes mercifully darkened and Wonwoo couldn't see Soonyoung's judgment within.

"What if I want to stay here, then? I'll just stay until I get that pity. I want it." Soonyoung sighed at that; he would only ever sigh in Wonwoo's company. Wonwoo thought it was fair, he had had enough of Soonyoung's smiles. They looked painful anyway. "It's better than nothing."

Silence trickled in like a leaky faucet, suffocating slowly but most surely, sweat seeping into his shirt from his palms and he felt the cold sweep over him in washes between the pulsing heat from Soonyoung's leg against his. Same height, he noticed; almost the same build, same language and gaze thrown in unison; same direction.

"I thought you understood me," he whispered. Non-accusatory; Wonwoo just wanted confirmation.

"I do," Soonyoung said, clear and above their breaths, unhidden. "I do and that's why I think it's better if we stop."

So close, so _so_ close Wonwoo thought he could kiss Soonyoung then and there. Pause. Let Soonyoung roll off his bed. "Your poem could be a tad less angry, I'll say!" he teased, bright smile instant as ever before pattering off to his own room right across the hall, leaving Wonwoo with too much paper and a sigh so pronounced, his chest caved in as it exhaled.

 

 

**April 1950**

Times Square was still frosty despite it being April, gifting dead skin with each gust of wind that managed to get in through the cracks every time. Wonwoo was huddled next to Soonyoung, both of them comically crouched next to Junhui and Joshua's dapper figures—stood up by Huncke but upright still.

"Why do we have to do this?" Soonyoung's teeth were chattering, poor voice battered by the end of winter and his lack of a thicker coat.

"Allen quit being Huncke's errand boy," Joshua tried to say as evenly as he could, cigarette shivering in his exposed fingers. "He can use our time, we can use his money."

Wonwoo rose up, spat onto the ground and stomped out his cigarette in the mucus. "We are risking _deportation_ here, you asswad."

Spitting, if not in each other's mouths, then in their faces. Wonwoo had joked about the logic with Junhui and Soonyoung once, innocently, without the intention to scathe. This was definitely scathing, Wonwoo drawing out a seething glare from Joshua who always had his chin up, shoulders squared to prove that he was worthy, he was present. Spit on the ground, stomp your cigarette out. No light should illuminate quarrels this ugly because Wonwoo still wanted Joshua to look at him, regardless of whatever lied behind his outlandishly dark irises. Black eyes made everything so much easier—clarity was fatal in speech. Nothing set Wonwoo on edge as much as talking to bright-eyed blondes did.

Joshua's saccharine voice glossed the top of their arguments like sugar glaze on crumbling cake. "This is all for our own good, _Watson_."

News of Ginsberg's arrest traveled fast across the university, and Joshua jumped on the opportunity as if the task was initially robbed by Ginsberg himself from his hands. Huncke needed only one glance of his dark hair and jet-black eyes before saying _okay_.

A couple months as Huncke's new errand boy, and never did he ever ask anyone to accompany him on his runs. Wonwoo was only second to Junhui in the race of raising eyebrows upon the request.

"It's okay, Won—Watson." Junhui had always been placative. "My dad can help pull strings with the Chinese embassy if things get bad. Let's just stay alert, alright?"

"Not alright," Soonyoung sighed. He'd been sighing more frequently, these days. Not loud enough for anyone to notice yet. "Read the papers, Jun. No one in the Chinese embassy would help two South Korean immigrants in fucking America, of all places."

The news posters peeling off streetlamps and cold brick walls mocked them in agreement. Huncke was nowhere to be seen, and they were four suspicious-looking foreigners loaded to the nines with LSD sheets under their coats. Now level with Junhui and Joshua, Wonwoo had the chance to observe Soonyoung crouched beneath him. Eyes matte and dulled out, wind-chafed skin making his cheeks a constant red, painful. Why was Soonyoung always so painful to look at. His lips were imploring—imploring what exactly, even their owner didn't know.

"Please, Shua-hyung," Soonyoung begged, "we shouldn't do this."   

And that pity Wonwoo had been yearning for, Soonyoung obtained first. Tender Soonyoung who kept to the sidelines with his canister of nitrous oxide and bubbly laughter, completely unbefitting of the name Joshua enforces onto him; he could never be a _Sawyer_ , what with his soft limbs and short fingers barely reaching the right keys on the typewriter. Sweet Soonyoung who won in the end, yet Wonwoo didn't feel victorious. He pitied. The fight had left him right there.

Soonyoung got up on his feet slowly, with ease and grace and the peace one envied potheads for. His hands were promptly on Joshua's frigid shoulders; thumbs rolling hypnotic circles into bolted joints. "We'll do whatever you want in school tomorrow, okay? I'll do it. I'll throw a fucking thing of noodles in ol' Zachary's face, I'll stop turning in good papers. Please. We love you."

There would be no contest when the opponent surrenders first. Wonwoo resigned, as did Joshua, neck limp and chin tucked in as he let his shoulders fall in Soonyoung's grip. "I love you, too," he agreed, "all of you."

In some absurd act of pure sympathy, Junhui tossed Wonwoo the stiffest grin he could muster, followed by a fresh cigarette.

***

"I will admit," Junhui started through his cloud of smoke, "that having Soonie as a leader is a bore compared to Shua."

Wonwoo retorted heatedly, "Fucking _Jisoo_ just wants to kiss white rebel ass. He would do anything if it meant Burroughs would notice him." The bong's neck grew sticky in his death grip.

"I was joking, Wonwoo." At this point, Wonwoo was doubting his choice of companions. A whitewashed leech, some wretched two-faced martyr, and now a Tom hiding behind his friendly façade of _Jerry_. "It's definitely safe fun we're having here, spitting pulp at Pontiacs and pissing all over our essays."

It felt wrong and unbearably immoral, to be stark naked and this close to Wen Junhui. The friction of their bare thighs touching barely felt like warmth. Junhui slung an awkward arm around Wonwoo's waist and watched his stomach tense away from the touch. "Please, Wonwoo," he grimaced. "We're pathetic enough as is."

Wonwoo counted three breaths before exhaling loudly, allowing Junhui to hold him. "You don't even like me _that_ way," he mused. Junhui pried his fingers open to put the bong away in an outstanding parody of affection.

"And here I thought you hated Burroughs's boys and their romanticism." Junhui's hold turned into a grip and then a throw—the air was knocked out of Wonwoo's lungs, phantom pain as his back hit the mattress, Junhui towering over him on admirably long limbs that just seemed grotesque at the moment, bug-like eyes peering and prying and so _forceful_ Wonwoo wanted to punch them blind; he had too much of this violence in him, had too much anger and _why_ s and unanswered _please_ s. His thin wrists stood no chance against Junhui's sturdy hands. "Look at you. Still thinking about the emotions behind it all. Isn't it enough to hold?"

Wonwoo didn't have to beg for Junhui's gaze; he received it in excess, in these fake smolders and wide-eyed inquiries almost mistaken as contempt. If he could just look beyond the growing hatred—Wonwoo knew for sure there was something more. Something he wasn't quite getting at. "I'm not being romantic here, Junhui."

"Romance is reserved strictly for aesthetics," Junhui told him not unkindly, but the words stung anyway, Wonwoo's ears already babied to an incredible sensitivity by Soonyoung's smothering consideration. "Has America gotten so deep in your head that you've forgotten Eastern structure?"

With Wonwoo's wrists free and hips straddled, desperately; this was how Junhui kissed. Just like the drunken bodies in their weekend parties, all confused motions and melancholic lips wishing for fingers to point them, _here_. Wonwoo couldn't bear it; he broke the kiss almost instantly, tucking Junhui's face in the crook of his shoulder for fear of seeing the sheer _loss_ all over his features. This was what he couldn't fathom. Now he wondered if it was more of a _he didn't want_ than a _he couldn't_.

"I'm being very factual here, Junhui, when I say that no, you don't like this nor do you think it's enough, that we're all frankly being very sad right now—just because we all want Jisoo doesn't mean we love him. I know he wants to belong here, but _also_ know he can never rise above Burroughs, or Ginsberg, or even deadbeat _Kerouac_ , for that matter." He had to stop for breath—Junhui's racing heartrate only inspired his own. Their ribs were too thin for this. "It's hard for Shua-hyung, yes, but half of his family is here; the same can't be said for us. Don't you ever miss home? Miss having somewhere to rightfully place your love?"

"It's not like that. I wasn't infatuated like you guys were." The reek of marijuana had seeped deep into their skin, and Wonwoo gasped when Junhui exhaled shakily into his shoulder, "I love him."

_keep me, darling!_  
_what do you use me for!_  
 _list them all down, my lone shoulder your reception desk_  
 _love let me be stowed away._

**October 1950**

War didn't sound real, happening thousands of miles away from them with news that never arrived on time. Soonyoung scoffed at the day's paper. "It's really happening," he muttered, frantically grabbing another cigarette from Wonwoo's nightstand. He couldn't conceal the trembling of his fingers. "Can't believe China chose to side with the North. Fuck."

"Yeah," Junhui offered in shocking apathy from under the bed, feet poking out from the other side as he passed the gas mask back and forth between Wonwoo and himself. They were on their last canister for now; Joshua told them to lay low for a few days, he would try to get more of everything—gas, tobacco, pot, gin, _everything_ —from Burroughs. "Fuck."

None of them needed Joshua's drunken rambling about how they couldn't go home now, that they should all stay here, close to him and close to the university where nothing could touch them. Wonwoo inhaled the gas deeper with each turn, watched Junhui's eyes drift lazily to Joshua's figure. His fingers reached out before melting into the rug underneath his arm as if saying _I don't mind getting stepped on, my dear_. The scene played out like a Shakespearian tragedy; Wonwoo didn't even have to give the mask back to Junhui—he was already undoing himself. Looking up at Soonyoung perched atop the bed was like being submerged underwater; blurry, not knowing where he started or ended.

Soonyoung rose to sit at the bed's edge, toes poking at Wonwoo's arm. "Anymore of the gas and you'll send yourself to an asylum, Wonwoo."

" _Watson_ , Sawyer." Joshua hobbled over to drag Junhui out from under the bed. "His name is Watson and your name is Sawyer and—fuck, we gotta get it right this time. We gotta be in—in the _circle_ for the New Vision and—have comrades." He was more than drunk; irked, Wonwoo thought. "Stay safe and all that."

They dumbly nod out of complacency. Wonwoo couldn't be defiant anymore; he blindly grabbed at Soonyoung's ankle, trusting that _some of those guys aren't bad, y'know? They're a friendly bunch_. If he couldn't trust Joshua, he could at least trust Soonyoung. Joshua squared his shoulders in a show of spirit, cheerily told them that a round of obscene poetry was in order to clear the bad air plaguing them, to which Junhui chimed in with an enthusiastic roar of _phallic haiku please_ , and Wonwoo had to pass.

"You trust Jisoo still?" he asked in hushed tones even though Joshua and Junhui had left, homeland syllables slurred together in a dialect that can't be understood by capital urbanites. The switch alerted Soonyoung pleasantly. He jostled his leg and proceeded to swing the limb in rhythmic fashion along with Wonwoo's arm, in time with an old local nursery rhyme.

"I do," Soonyoung answered in a much lower register, "but not as much as I trust you."

Clamping the gas tubing shut proved to be a much harder task when your hands did not agree with gravity or the physics of the human skeletal structure, but Wonwoo did it anyway, in what could've been sometime between two minutes and a whole half-hour. Soonyoung was still seated on his bed. His knobby knees remained patiently still when Wonwoo held onto them for leverage, hoisting himself up to sit on the floor while using Soonyoung's lap as a makeshift cradle for his too-heavy head. The early afternoon sun spun the sheets into golden circles as if to decorate his sparse corner of the room.

"Jisoo's trying to be leader again. I don't get him; where's the power in commanding a bunch of boys to do your bidding?"

"You're so fucking aggressive, it's hilarious." Soonyoung's fingers stroke Wonwoo's hair without any particular order. Back and forth, brush out, a slight scrape on his scalp. "There's a lot of power in that—you've seen what the kids would do for a thrill." Blunt nails pressed down on his head hard enough for Wonwoo to wince. "See?"

"I don't want a thrill," Wonwoo exhaled, slapping Soonyoung's hand away before lunging forward to hold him. "I don't ever want to end up in a holding cell again."

He felt Soonyoung breathe into his hair; warm. "We won't." Gentle strokes across Wonwoo's back made his heart pound slow but loud. "I can keep Shua-hyung in check. Don't worry about it, Wonwoo."

Tenderness made one digress back to pouts and immediate want; Wonwoo cupped Soonyoung's cheeks, moved to kiss him right on the mouth but Soonyoung swiftly turned his head away. There was rejection in Soonyoung's posture; very slight, but it was present, and it did not welcome Wonwoo's advance as eagerly as he wished it to. He understood and clambered off Soonyoung with plenty of spared dignity. No kisses were to be shared between friends as close as this.

"The typewriter is where you go to, during times like these."

Soonyoung pointed to the blasted machine, already occupied thanks to Junhui and Joshua, with a grin that begged to be wiped off his face. Wonwoo laughed in surrender.


	2. He Whistles and He Runs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to any of u beat enthusiasts out there, msorry this couldve been way more accurate honestly but......... am i writing about the orig beat boys? NO. SO AH A
> 
> thankyou very much to keren for being the Source of Gay i so needed. u were lovely thank u for the gay beat poems. <3333

**II.**

**_He Whistles and He Runs_ **

 

 

**August 1951**

Between the four of them, Junhui was the first to get his poem into Ginsberg's main circle. Joshua managed to get a small-time publishing gig with Huncke after all the favors, but it wasn't his name on the cover; it was all of them, and Wonwoo didn't have to look twice to see his dissatisfaction, the grating noise every time he ran out of ink and the pen ripped across cheap paper.

Summer meant more cigarettes, more bars with just enough light to show off sweat-slicked skin, glistening and inviting. Everyone was out like an ant colony before the rain, and anyone with a body still capable of dance and sex would do just that—bodies on beds, on floors, bodies on the kitchen counter, bodies kissing, bodies strewn about, unconscious, bodies too human and bodies less so, bodies that Wonwoo couldn't tear his eyes away from because that was what the bugs did to you—skin itching for more skin to rub out the heat within. New York's version of summer was a joke and Wonwoo needed more than light perspiration; he needed to burn.

Wen Junhui didn't quite exist anymore—the stringy limbs and bug-like eyes shifted into something feline, something that was more Gerald "Jerry" Werther. Soonyoung guffawed at that from his perpetually-there cloud of smoke; a parody was what he called it, because of course, he would know what Wonwoo knew. The lovesick boy with eyes too large for crying didn't want them anymore. He wanted for too long and too much; now whatever part of him that could want was broken.

He got rid of the romance. Cold aesthetics and the precision of his heritage was what he waged against the New Vision, and Joshua knew where power lied. Change of hands—Soonyoung was now back to Wonwoo's corner bed and the gas canister.

Wonwoo wasn't surprised; soft things melt in the summer.

"I was thinking." Soonyoung started, all doped out and pliant. "We could go on a trip. Just the two of us."

Their heads knocked against each other, except Soonyoung's was upside-down, hanging from the bed's edge, and Wonwoo's back leaned against its frame. "Now?"

"They're all so hungry, Wonwoo-yah," Soonyoung whined with pity, "but look at me. I'm all filled up to the top, right here." _Here_ being a mistake his hand made thumping against a nondescript part of his rib instead of the heart or stomach. "We don't need much. We can go. Now!"

"You don't wanna wait for them?" _Them_ being an implicit loss.

Soonyoung shook his head— _no_ —and mouthed his reply against Wonwoo's temple. "You're not _really_ waiting if you have to ask me that." If there was one fight Wonwoo could pick right now, it was with whoever decided that only the mouth counts for damage. The skin of his cheeks and forehead were seared with each kiss, Soonyoung's mouth parted and lazy in its touch. "What're you even waiting for?"

 _To love is to wait._ "Aren't you waiting, too?" Wonwoo questioned him back. "You said it yourself; you love him, don't you?"

Soonyoung's hands probably couldn't register the heat of Wonwoo's skin from all the drugs he'd taken that day—that was how he could deal all the damage he did. He was too soft, and only in this state of not being, body heavy with something that wasn't really all him in essence, could Soonyoung function.

"You'd lie, too, if you were in my place. It's so _easy_ to be gentle, Wonwoo."

Rain washed over the Village in torrents that Wonwoo's frazzled mind thought was strong enough to break through his apartment's walls. The thunder shook his slight frame, like a boy who had never left home, but Soonyoung stayed immaculately still. All the tenderness of his known heart had evaporated into the stuffy heat and Wonwoo didn't know what to do with all the stone he found once the moss was gone.

"Of all people, you should know too well that I'm best at destruction." Wonwoo nodded in agreement but knew it wasn't wholly true.

Soonyoung managed to soften even the most shocking heartbreak.

 

 

_darling, give my affection form.  
(thought: heartstrings spun out of thin air. fabrication)_

 

 

***

The cheap car they got from one of Junhui's admirers was incredibly small, to the point where Wonwoo would call it adorable out of fascination. Every bumpy road was emphasized, heat within the vehicle hotter than a stove left on maximum power because _of course, you had to get a black car, Wonwoo. Bravo!_

"Quit your bitching and tell me, left or right?"

Wonwoo's hand gestured _left_ without him looking at Soonyoung. It wasn't that he didn't want to, no, he was just busy. Kerouac's new scroll invigorated him somewhat. There was a tan on his face that Wonwoo missed; laughter raspy from all the smoke and faded out when he had no gas in his lungs, but it was there, and that was all Wonwoo needed. Wonwoo would always want to look if it was Soonyoung.

American bugs were their own brand of crazy, Wonwoo mused. While they didn't swarm, they left his skin raised and ripened-red, smarting. Soonyoung would've nicked all seven of his bug-bites open if Wonwoo didn't slap the pocketknife out of his grip after the first one. It fell into the river with a fat _splash_.

"You sick _fuck_!" Wonwoo cried. He pointed towards Soonyoung's profusely bleeding knee in a frenzied panic because there was a lot of blood from the scratch-turned-cut—Wonwoo shocked the knife past Soonyoung's skin.

"Oh! Like you could've not screamed your fucking head off, _bitch_." Soonyoung's sweaty hands stung the wound and he hissed. It didn't help that the riverside was a humid wasteland of at least a million insects. Wonwoo's shirt was off in one tug, sweat-stained and horrendously damp but the bleeding needed to stop before he could rush to bring Soonyoung water.

"Does it hurt? Does it still hurt?"

Soonyoung slapped Wonwoo's cheek patronizingly, the sort that reminded Wonwoo of a reprimanding mother in an inappropriate awestruck state of her son's mess. "Stop that, I'm no baby, Wonwoo. Just go get the water."

They mutually agreed upon silence come sundown. Fairytale images of camping by the river with fireflies were shot down by the murky dark and pulsing heat which brought on cold sweat from the humidity. The beers Soonyoung smuggled out of Joshua's pantry were lukewarm, his knee still couldn't move without re-opening the wound, and Wonwoo was painfully antsy for more than just cigarettes.

"Well, this is less than ideal," he sighed, dismal.

"Okay, but you were the one who shocked me into cutting my own knee."

"Soonyoung, nowhere on planet motherfucking _Earth_ does cutting your skin constitute as a _bug-bite remedy_!" Wonwoo yelled.

"It's not like I'll _die_ —"

"I know we don't do anything but smoke and drink so much it _seems_ like we'll die, but." Wonwoo's throat gave out, voice feeble and lungs labored. Moonlight on river on the outlines of Soonyoung's face on his dark, dark eyes. Murky. Impossible to see through because they were never settled, they were always gearing up for something, to fight for and against what they had yet to come to terms with. It was always this excruciating distance between them; where Wonwoo could hear their breaths replace clocks and god—Soonyoung was always so close to touch, so close to burn. "I—why do you do this. To yourself."

"Look at where we are right now, Wonwoo." Soonyoung reached for a cigarette, brushing against Wonwoo clumsily as he did. He was trying so hard, to be there, to be wholly present. "Jun's the one with the upper-hand now, Jisoo follows him, and—just trust me, trust that this works out. I know you don't really love or like or—seek _pity_ from Jisoo, you just."

Wonwoo knew Soonyoung knew, but it was always worth it to hear the words said aloud, as masochistic as it was. "Just what?"

"We're the same. Always a lil' angry. But Wonwoo, you... not just romantic, you—you want anarchy in your romance, Wonwoo, you want things done so well they destroy themselves from inside-out from how _perfect_ it is and—and that's exactly what you wanted with Jisoo. You would love him, then hate yourself, then hate him too, and where would we all be then?" Wonwoo steeled himself by focusing on the river background; the crickets, the disgusting frogs, the itch on his exposed ankles from mosquitoes. He took a deep drag of his cigarette before flicking it into the water. "That's why I played him how I did. You all think I lost, that I've been used and chucked away, I'm an underdog. And that's fine. Better me faking it than you having all this for real."

"That's a little insulting," was Wonwoo's weak comment after the entire confession, "you make it sound like I'm some wuss."

Soonyoung chuckled in Wonwoo's face, beer and ashes in his breath. "You wouldn't last a fucking week doing what I've been doing."

"I would, you just wouldn't let me."

Beer, ash, the copper tang of blood lingering about the heavy summer air; Wonwoo leaned in before Soonyoung had the chance to lift his cigarette back to his lips. The kiss was deliberate, close-lipped and with shaky breaths through the nose because this was only a gauge. Wonwoo waited for Soonyoung to call out his bluff, make him lay his cards out. His hands were rooted to the grass underneath them—the only mercy Wonwoo allowed himself was for his eyes to stay shut.

Hope glimmered in the spaces between Soonyoung's sparse lashes, observable when Wonwoo opened his eyes to Soonyoung's still-closed lids.

"I'm not Jisoo," Soonyoung whispered.

"I know."

"I..." Clammy hands tentatively held Wonwoo's face. He could smell the blood and grass when Soonyoung's thumb stroked his cheek. "I won't pity you. I won't use you and you can't use me."

Wonwoo nodded. "I know."

"I know what you do with Junhui, y'know." Soonyoung was determined in keeping the few inches of distance between them.

"No," Wonwoo chuckled, shaking his head. "No—I wouldn't dream of just—that's not how I would do it. With you." He heaved a sigh. "You know I trust you the most."

"Really?" Soonyoung asked in pitiful wonder, not as wide-eyed as Wonwoo wished for; his stare was steely in pessimistic anticipation.

The thing about Soonyoung was that he tried to be too many things at once; emphasis on _be_ and not _do_. Wonwoo would catch Soonyoung during his in-betweens, like how he was at the moment, all hollowed-out and a self-destructive hypocritical mess. It was a cursed privilege. It was also impossible for Wonwoo to be prepared for this; a shamefully petty voice in the back of his mind was determined on arguing the logic of how Soonyoung just wanted to get away with all the destruction he had borne into their little circle by means of _pity_ because that was his currency, that was what he could trade best, and that was what he was going to get back hundredfold. Realistically, logic didn't apply to Soonyoung. Foolishly irrational with too much mouth than he could handle because Wonwoo was the same. The only difference was that Soonyoung realized the ideas that Wonwoo would never even think of beyond drugged daydreams.

So here they were—half-and-half, hoping for nothing and yet everything with their defenses still up despite their own protests begged to _take them down take them down take me down_. "Really."

The panic leapt out when it registered in Soonyoung's head that Wonwoo was forcing his way in past all the one-ups Soonyoung had over him. "I lied," he said outright. Wonwoo didn't buy it because Soonyoung had always been aware, it was just that Wonwoo had caught up to him by now and he was scared. "I don't really know what to do, now. I told you to trust me but I don't know what to do now, and I—"

"You don't have to," Wonwoo sighed, hand covering Soonyoung's to pull him into another kiss, surer this time because dread wasn't something to handle gingerly. "Don't have to do anything at all."

"Do you still trust me?" Soonyoung nearly hissed. "Wonwoo, I swear, this is more than just us being best friends—you've gotta trust me with your _life_." The dramatic flair was too much and Wonwoo laughed in Soonyoung's face to appease his mean streak, guilt hitting instantaneously when he heard Soonyoung breathe in stutters. He shut up, cleared his throat.

Some old tale that Junhui mumbled at some point, hundreds of parties ago, of a monk whose master held his head underwater to the point of drowning. The monk was revived, said to have gotten closer to enlightenment— _when you have craved truth as you crave air, then you will know what truth is._ The image hung itself over Wonwoo's fevered conscience; the river sloshing against the muddy banks and bubbles of water in a plugged-up sink. Soonyoung's hand was still in his. He moved it over his eyes, placed Soonyoung's thumb over his nose, and now he was the sink, he was breathing in bubbles and they would run out.

Pull in. Kiss blindly. Soonyoung learned early on that Wonwoo's grip wasn't letting up anytime soon and was mercifully pulled away to let Wonwoo breathe in choked gasps. A slow surrender, a sure victory. Wonwoo allowed himself to be pushed down, Soonyoung's bloodied knee a constant pressure on his thigh. "Let go of my hand," Soonyoung gasped.

Wonwoo did. The stars draped over Soonyoung's head like a veil—this was what he first saw upon opening his eyes and he nearly cried from how disgustingly cliched it was. They closed again just as Soonyoung leaned in; white dots dulled to seafoam green behind his eyelids.

No more bubbles on the water's surface—the truth had been under his nose this whole time.


	3. Interlude (I)

**Interlude (I)**

Junhui lived within fine cracks; the in-betweens, the tiny spaces forgotten and covered upon layers of _now_.

The thing is that when you live in something for too long, you forget what that _something_ even is.

"My dad can help pull strings with the Chinese embassy if things get bad." He couldn't remember actually perceiving the logic behind his words. He played it as his father taught him ever since he understood what the word _power_ meant. It was reflex, at this point, to say as such whenever things went sour. "Let's just stay alert, alright?"

Junhui wasn't the mediator in the group, thought, in fact he was far from. The true mediator was Wonwoo—always caught in the crossfire and too deep in his thoughts to actually doubt anyone. Too deep in figuring out the democracy of distributing his love to each of them when it all went to Soonyoung. Too deep in trying to play the rebel when he would never, could never. Wonwoo was a follower until the end and Junhui considered this, crossed Wonwoo off his mental list.

"You could just tell me the truth," he said airily through a cloud of smoke. Soonyoung ignored him, stuffing his pipe. "Tell me you want out of this."

Now, Soonyoung—where does one start with Soonyoung? Soonyoung was never caught in anything, at least not involuntarily. If he didn't jump into the fight, he was the one pulling the trigger. Junhui saw it in how Soonyoung was most wary of sharing his marbles when they were children, how Wonwoo kept their passports but Soonyoung had the visas and permits. A goddamned wolf—that was Soonyoung—but he was so good at playing the sheep, so good at being so lovable he had Junhui catching himself too often for his liking.

So good at playing the victim.

"No, I just think it's within our best interests if Shua slows down a bit." There was never much tension between him and Soonyoung, not like when Junhui was with Wonwoo or god forbid, Joshua. This made it much easier for him to raise his hand, gently covering Soonyoung's mouth with his palms when the latter leaned in.

"You can't fool me," Junhui warned, but without malice in his voice; no urgency, goodwill, or confidence. It was more of a statement in terms of strength, and Soonyoung's lips twisted into a defeated smile against his skin before retreating. "You hate it here."

The ice in Soonyoung's glass cracks abruptly before clinking in apology. "I do," Soonyoung replied, "I want out."

"But not without Wonwoo?"

It wasn't a question, but Soonyoung was courteous enough to shake his head. The nightlamp did its best job in chiseling his face; all soft slopes but he had high cheeks, a sharp chin. Junhui found Soonyoung's ability to constantly smile too unnerving, unfair.

"He doesn't like Joshua—not the way I do, at least." Junhui wasn't proud of the statement, but it was the best he could think of. It was impossible to get a rise out of Soonyoung. Anyone else would think they were dealing with a high junkie.

"I know. That's why I did what I did." Swirl of his glass, a sip, a drag. Junhui wondered if any of these actions were worth second-guessing. Soonyoung leaned further into the wall, like he wanted to be sucked into the paint. His fingers were intertwined. Hands clasped tight. Nervous but not at the same time, easy grin still on his face. "Now Wonwoo will either be biased against or for Shua. I'll figure it out either way. It's—there are no hard feelings here, okay?" His fingers pressed against knuckles, tighter, white fingertip and knuckles looking less like bone, more of flesh. Fingertips squeezing into clay. "I'm not trying to sabotage you guys. I just wanna go home."

"That why you have cocaine stuffed behind Wonwoo's nightstand?"

The evidence spoke for itself; Wonwoo's nightstand stood aloof as ever, but with less dust, just an inch off the wall, one inch too much according to Junhui's memory of their shared room.

"I only take the excess," Soonyoung quickly supplied.

"I'm not accusing you." Junhui took a long, slow drag of his pipe, as if to prove that he had no ill intentions. This was not an interrogation. "I wanna help you. Whatever you need done with Shua, I can do, as long as none of us are hurt."

The tension between them diffused as the smoke from Junhui's lips did. Soonyoung laughed in this incredible softness, something that couldn't be faked, couldn't be imitated, and Junhui understood—even if just the slightest bit—why Wonwoo felt the way he did.

"All I've ever done is take advantage of you, it seems," Soonyoung sighed, "ever since we were kids."

After Joshua left, it was Soonyoung and Wonwoo, with Junhui as their sad addition. His position as a prominent politician's son did lend them leverage against their peers, even if they were a bunch of ten-year-olds with mud caked under their fingernails. It would be a lie to say Junhui was never hurt. But it would be more of a lie to say he wasn't aware.

"We're not kids anymore." Junhui extended a hand out. "Pleasure to be working with you from now on, Kwon."

Soonyoung accepted the handshake; firm and concise, perfect. "You too," he said in hushed tones. His eyes softened though, before adding with great pertinence, "Don't forget we're friends."

Junhui nodded. They were friends, yes, they were. He knew. They all knew.

But this was an entirely different game.

 

 

_love is:_

_an endless performance_  
  _where you're always the victim_  
 _no equality_  
 _irresponsible_  
 _anarchy_  
 _economy_  
 _want_  
 _lust_  
 _nothing at all_  
 _._


	4. When the Last Fire Dies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im a fool and this fic is actually Not Complete i just need to FINISH THE LAST FUCKING CHAPTER
> 
> anywho im sorry i made shua so mean. i swear hes just misguided and young.

**III.**

**_When the Last Fire Dies_ **

**September 1951**

With the last dregs of summer drained from every visible form of flora and each pair of star-dazed eyes came autumn, and autumn meant traffic was back in full flow; humidity sapped dry along with everyone's pockets and staying out to smoke didn't seem feasible because the moment you forget to drag yourself to bed would be the moment you die. Drugs were in high demand, and Burrough's recent arrest was Columbia's little descend into pandemonium as freshmen rapped on doors impatiently and seniors drilled discreet holes in the corners of their rooms, stuffed them with cocaine. The fraternities couldn't be bothered to compete with the _beatnik_ s—it was rush season and pledges only grew in quantity, not quality.

"Look alive, lads," Junhui said in shushed tones that did nothing to disguise his zeal. With Burrough gone, the inner circle and its dealers were in his hands. Wonwoo believed it was within their best interests. "Our best boy is back."

Joshua flashed them the inside of his jacket, confirming that they were now the best dealers in all of New York City, beating Ginsberg and Huncke's record with a good ten ounces of weed and four sheets of LSD in total.

Lookout wasn't even necessary anymore when Soonyoung and Wonwoo had the patrol times ingrained into their memories more than their lectures ever would. A quick gesture of the hand, and they drove away much too leisurely for the magnitude of their loot, all cradled in their laps like babies. Soonyoung's hand found Wonwoo's in the backseat; it latched on just as tightly as he held onto the drugs.

If anyone were to ask him when exactly did this solidarity begin, he would admit that no, he can't remember, it was much too long ago and unfortunately vague. Hairline cracks had crawled across all four walls of his room, so thin that he wouldn't ever notice if it weren't for Joshua pointing it out to him the other afternoon, and that's when Wonwoo realized that he hadn't slept well in ages. Nervous anticipation of when exactly Joshua would take notice and point out his and Soonyoung's betrayal keeps his stomach in knots every day.

See, Soonyoung had plans.

Soonyoung had _big_ plans.

Soonyoung had a plan to embezzle enough of their group's deal earnings for two tickets back to South Korea. He did this with utmost care; Wonwoo watched the exact weigh-ins of their excessive stock whenever the others were still celebrating, he knew of the crack in the wall behind Soonyoung's nightstand ( _because a shelf would be too big and therefore, too obvious, Wonwoo-yah_ ). He knew that Soonyoung would cling only to him when inebriated, fevered nightmares of their friends finding out too clear in his head. He knew that whenever they went out to deal, Soonyoung's hands searched for Wonwoo's _always_ because he couldn't stop picking at the bags, ripping the ends.

"Do you think they'll find out?" he would unfailingly ask after a little ritual; the first time he peeled his nightstand away from the wall, dead bugs and a spider web got underneath his nails and into the lines along his palms. Soonyoung used a small screwdriver and hammer to chip away at the paint, plaster, cement. Cold sweat dotted the tip of his nose as he stuffed weed into the crack, hands caked with grime. The movement was no longer nerve-wracking; Soonyoung had twenty-something dollars' worth of weed behind his nightstand now, and his hands caught dirt no more, nightstand completely clean from how repeatedly he had practiced the act.

Soonyoung had big plans and was putting everything he had at stake for Wonwoo. All he had to do was say yes. The offer remained in Wonwoo's mouth like a box of _Atomic Fireball_ ; red-hot and stubbornly present no matter how much he jostled it with his tongue, sucked on it until his jaws hurt.

They had talked about home several times before, be it in passing or with purpose. For all the bravado they had in leaving Korea, it was mostly persuasion on Joshua's overly-grandiose imagery of New York. Soonyoung called it a modest brag. Junhui called it loneliness. Wonwoo didn't agree with the latter until now. Wonwoo also thought Junhui's opinion extended to all four of them, in their own ways.

In the end, this was Soonyoung. This was Soonyoung with his soft, ink-stained hands and so many _plans_ in motion that persuasion had no place on his table. There was never a choice to begin with and he was stupid for ever having thought of one. He slapped a smile on his face; it was less painful in action as he faced Soonyoung in broad, blinding daylight.

"No one will find out, don't worry."

 

 

**August 1952**

Wonwoo had a perfect weekend in mind: dress up all goofy in a polo ensemble to attend BTP's party because Joshua told them he knew a friend, who was a friend of somebody's girlfriend's friend, and they wanted drugs. A lot of them. So dress up in a polo tee, kiss Soonyoung sober at least once before going, get thoroughly wasted while Junhui and Joshua deal, and kiss Soonyoung again once they were all drunk. Hope to wake up next to Soonyoung naked. Hope to repeat this until Monday.

He did not expect to wake up with the left side of his face completely bruised in, mouth tasting nothing but copper and glass stuck all over his eye. He did not expect to be carried all the way back home by Soonyoung. Most of all, he did not expect Joshua to have a bullet in his arm or for Junhui to be locked up in a local precinct for _drug possession_ charges, and what would end up as _illegal drug dealing_ if someone doesn't post bail anytime soon.

" _Get back to us soon, Soonyoung_ ," Wonwoo overheard past the crackling static. Soonyoung nodded instead of answering properly. He hung up the moment he noticed Wonwoo rustling awake.

Wonwoo registered pain all over his face, incessant throbbing from its left side. He let Soonyoung run icy-cold fingertips across the broken skin anyway. "Who was that?"

"Jisoo-hyung." Soonyoung retrieved a first-aid kit and proceeded to re-dress Wonwoo's wounds. "You recall the evening?"

Wonwoo winced at a particularly deep cut, just under his eye, thin-skinned and dripping warmth down to the corner of his mouth before Soonyoung ripped another bit of cotton to dab it away. "There was a snitch," he mumbled carefully around the cuts on his lips, "Jun got dragged into the fight. Jisoo got shot."

"And you got fucking trampled on."

"That, I did," Wonwoo chuckled. "Are they arrested then?"

"They want me to post bail." Soonyoung's touches remained light, hands deft in wrapping and taping the gauze around the contours of Wonwoo's face. He begged for sympathy through a stare instead—Wonwoo met it squarely out of his good eye, followed Soonyoung's line of vision fall upon their secret nightstand.

"How much have you made there?"

"Five-hundred."

"How much is bail?"

Final snip of the scissors; Soonyoung packs away his supplies with a reluctant lethargy. "...five-hundred." He got up, legs bare in his boxers and Wonwoo's arms were still too asleep to reach out and touch. "I'm not posting bail," Soonyoung said from the other side of the room. By the time his voice entered Wonwoo's ears, the words were whispers. "Wonwoo, let's get out of here already."

Soonyoung's figure in the morning sunlight was the closest thing to divine that Wonwoo could ever experience, and it was huddled into itself against a wall. "War," Wonwoo supplied weakly, waving for Soonyoung to come back to the bed. He complied.

"We should skip town, then. Five-hundred will last us a good while."

Wonwoo scooted over for Soonyoung to nestle next to him. He clumsily shucked his slacks off because they made it impossible to feel the skin of Soonyoung's thigh against his own. Soonyoung drew his leg up to his chest; the one with the bad knee, scar still pink and raised and shiny when Wonwoo ran his finger across it. He kissed it; let his mouth linger, reveled in how Soonyoung shuddered.

"You know they're our friends," Wonwoo whispered against the scar, almost apologetically even though he knew there was nothing for him to be guilty of. Perhaps he was playing martyr, playing civil and nice. Playing democracy when there was none of that among them. They were all greedy, this he knew, letting Soonyoung take his chin and mouth and mind. He let Soonyoung touch him, in all his gentleness, in all his care and affection, in all that he knew of _Soonyoung_ —he trusted. Wonwoo came whimpering into Soonyoung's mouth, wounds throbbing, still hard in the other's fist.

"I'll post bail," Soonyoung said shortly after cleaning up, smiling and defeated—it was always that same defeated smile that he threw with too much abandon. Wonwoo couldn't decide if it was Soonyoung being too weak or if the battle was too difficult; the beckoning for pity was clear, full clarity, and Wonwoo couldn't resist its pull every fucking time.

"Yeah," Wonwoo replied, thoughtless as he gathered his clothes. "Yeah, okay. Thank you." He remembered the touching, how tender everything was. "I really mean it."

Soonyoung threw him yet another unreadable smile. "Don't mention it, Wonwoo-yah."

***

The first thing Joshua did upon arriving back home in his dorm room was hang his jacket up.

The second thing he did was deck Soonyoung in the face; knuckles too loose for it to be a punch, but it was forceful enough, livid enough. Junhui held Joshua down with his arms wrapped around the latter like a straitjacket while Wonwoo rushed to Soonyoung's side. Thick blood dribbled out the corner of his mouth, but the black of his eyes quivered instead of his lips. There was no reason to feel fear, however, as the fight finally left Joshua in the quick shudder and slump of his shoulders. Compliance and surrender. Almost acceptance. Wonwoo never thought he would see Joshua wave his white flag; he had always been so full of it, pointlessly optimistic in his ambitions, he and Soonyoung both.

"Thanks for the bail," Joshua muttered with no feeling behind his voice, tossing Soonyoung a first-aid kit before locking himself up in the bathroom with a stale bowl of weed.


	5. Interlude (II)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> msorry im Constantly Absent !

**Interlude (II)**

"I tried to get you to hate him, y'know."

Soonyoung picked at the hem of his makeshift bandage; the blood stain stopped spreading, bleeding ceased. He tried not to imagine what peeling the bit of fabric off his knee would feel like. Sweat pricked his eyes and he winced.

One could tell summer was ending when dawn itself was hotter than the following day.

"Hate Jisoo-hyung?" Wonwoo laughed in disbelief, eyes trained on the road. "A little much, don't you think? He pisses me off sometimes but I don't _hate_ him."

Four days without shaving. Soonyoung scratched at the stubble on his chin, elbow propped against the window. "Emphasis on _tried_ , Wonwoo. I wanted to see how you would feel towards him if I were to push your buttons."

Wonwoo finally turned to look at Soonyoung, smiling with worn eyes and halfhearted lips. Still beautiful, Soonyoung thought; he had loved Wonwoo's face the best ever since they were kids, old-light eyes squinting from sweat and wind. "So did you want me to hate him or love him?"

That was a good question. Because Soonyoung left the ball right on the fence, stuck on its barbs from sheer guilt alone. Guilt over years of clinging onto Wonwoo, whether the latter realized or not, of wanting Wonwoo all for himself. Soonyoung was too good at playing himself up as anything needed; martyr, villain, friend, lover. He was so good at it that distinguishing the line between playing and _doing_ out of his own free will got terrifyingly challenging. Horrific in how he couldn't tell if his clinging onto Wonwoo was some odd ploy at getting back pieces of his old home or if he truly loved him.

(And if he did love Wonwoo, what was it that he loved specifically?)

"Neither, I guess." _Because it's me—I want you._

And that would bring on another sleepless night where he would ask himself of how the economy of Wonwoo's love fared against his.

_I want all of you._

Factually, Soonyoung could draw the charts. Wonwoo needed Soonyoung more than Soonyoung needed him. It was entirely plausible that Wonwoo was the gum stuck under Soonyoung's shoe instead of the other way around. But their economy went against his own doomed philosophy of washing his psyche every fucking week along with his clothes—launder the mind; empty, hollow it out, and it would be clean again for heavier soiling. Soonyoung's chores. The lunacy, the recklessness of it all, barely-thought-of acts which laid bare before him his own final meaning in existing and that was to capture the attention of a single, lone human.

(He wondered, too, sometimes—if the soil would catch up to the wash and nothing of his would ever be clean anymore.)

"Are you testing me or something?" Wonwoo asked quietly, almost inaudible over the gravel and the engine's inconsistent chirping.

"Why? Do you not like tests?"

"You want me to know what you're hiding." Wonwoo swerved to the far right of the beaten road, turning off the engine at lightning speed before releasing his seatbelt, leaning over the car's console to capture Soonyoung in a swift kiss. A hard press. An inquiry. "You're not entirely opaque, Soon-ah, did you know that?"

The frustrating double discourse had to end someday. He thought he could toss it all to a third person—make _himself_ the third person if Wonwoo would actually be infatuated with Joshua or Junhui. He thought it would work; as a third person, he would discover more joy, receive more validity, revel in his own secret complicity while watching the entire affair that was Wonwoo unwind before his eyes. But the conductor had left the orchestra and there was nobody left save for the two of them. He couldn't when eventually, everything would be about Wonwoo.

It would always be about Wonwoo.

And people thought wrong about kissing with one's eyes open; Soonyoung could see the blurry lashes, every strand of hair in between their faces, every speck and blemish that felt like nothing to his fingers because skin was skin and this was Wonwoo's skin. There was too much to see and take in, and Wonwoo's mouth was the only thing keeping him anchored from how utterly ridiculous their status quo had become.

"Why do you look at me that way?" Wonwoo sighed into the kiss.

 _Because of how much you've harmed me, but not in pain or sin. Harmful purity in how incredibly innocent, how much sin this lacks, where I can blame something and run—harmful from_ 'how full of your essence' _and all of_ you _could be spilled and it would be my fault—but god, how full of your essence, those eyes._

Soonyoung laughed it off, pulling Wonwoo in by the neck. "You made me look."

_in the endless horizon of gentleness that i_  
_perceive_  
 _as my love;_  
 _constant mourning_  
 _is my romance._


	6. Have a Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im so sorry yall its been a busy semester

**IV.**

**_Have a Heart_ **

**December 1952**

Power swayed easily—this is what Wonwoo learned over the brutal fall term of his senior year.

The BTP incident exploded in their faces from the lack of a guarantor behind the sloppy deal, and news dripped down the walls of every frathouse within Columbia, draining Junhui dry and by association, the rest of them. No more deals, no more bone-crushing handshakes, no more freshmen boldly bargaining for their subpar coke. Huncke let the police get him, the mad chivalry he went by, and so Ginsberg was all they had left. Back to square one.

Wonwoo flipped crisp notes with deft flicks of his thumb; it took them a good two, three months of literally and figuratively hustling to get back the five-hundred they lost. Ginsberg—the softest one of his bunch—was kind enough to set them up with Huncke's old contacts because he wanted to _free himself from all this_ business _before moving to San Francisco_. Soonyoung kept count; seven visits in total to and fro Huncke's detention center within the past three months but merely three meetings with Junhui and Joshua (twice when Junhui was alone, once when they were together and Joshua didn't say a word).

It had been a busy fall.

"Five-hundred sixty-four," Wonwoo beamed, "excluding change."

Soonyoung's face was no longer bruised, but it felt as if the wound never left; this was the first time he genuinely smiled in months, cheekbones pushed against dim eyes. He looked eighteen again. "Really?"

Seared painfully across their brains was the image of them both in a car that wasn't theirs, driving down the streets of Manhattan into a highway into greens into nothing. Driving and taking a ferry that would take them into a ship that would take them home. Home being Korea that didn't have sirens and newspaper littering the streets everywhere. Home being Korea without enlisting calls every evening.

Wonwoo wanted—badly. He hated New York and Manhattan and how the air here made him greedy, made him want everything more than he had ever wanted his whole life. "Yeah," he muttered, the notes carefully tucked underneath his mattress.

 

 

**February 1953**

Wonwoo and Junhui started smoking together again, forced into their former arrangement from the downright claustrophobic space between Soonyoung and Joshua's endless dance. New York's harsh winter did nothing to the red-hot wounds, and Soonyoung walked around like he still had a bruise the size of Texas across his eye; weighing him down and his movements dragged across time-space—Wonwoo held his hand through every step of the way and it was like a scratched record, slow and distorted, rewind-repeat.

"Finals are coming up," Junhui said absentmindedly, sobered from plain nicotine and coffee while the wind numbed his knees. "You, uh—do you have any plans? For after?"

"Haven't thought much of it." Wonwoo thought of it precisely twice in the past few months, and each train terminated service at the same station— _where Soonyoung goes, I go._

The omission did not escape Junhui's wit, or so he liked to believe. Wonwoo preferred to call it sympathy. "You're following Soonyoung, aren't you."

"I can say the same for you."

***

Soonyoung paced about the room frantically, steps agitated and blood simmering under his thin skin. "We can afford this job, Shua, it's not some drunken operation like BTP was."

" _Fuck no_ ," Joshua yelled back. "Every fucking idea from you is—god, Soonyoung, this one is _legitimate smuggling!_ I have never fucked with the black market and I'm _not_ starting now, for Christ's sake—"

"If we get at least seventy-percent of the goods in, Joshua, _seventy_ ," Soonyoung begged, voice lost in the last word as it quieted down to a whisper, "that's all the money we'll ever need to go back to Korea."

The thing was that America had never been a unanimous decision; it was desperation and the sick air of living in the same place for nearly two decades, the sudden noise in their hometown of radio waves begging for men (boys) to die in the frontlines. They were barely nineteen, then.

Joshua had tried so hard to not know this, but Soonyoung was water boiling over the pot's sides, violent hiss an alarm of its own. All that was left of them: the simmer. Wonwoo had lost count of how many times he had let the water boil over to nothingness in his own kitchen, gas tank passed between him and Junhui as his idle hands sweat out at least thirty pages of the same poem, over and over again, of how the water had up and gone and they were all running dry.

Three and a half years in America—nothing left in the kettle but soot.

"Are you seriously going back?" Joshua asked at last. The edge to his voice was dull. A rusted knife. "You—you can't. You know that. The war is still going on and—and you're safe here." _Here_ meaning America, and _America_ referring to where Joshua was. Where Joshua could see, hear, reach. The possessiveness was soft and kind, something they never doubted but home was home, and Wonwoo knew they were far too young to build anything farther than their childhood. Home away from home was a foreign concept and love wasn't enough. "Why ever go back?"

Wonwoo wanted to kick himself for feeling relieved at the conversation, this exact conversation he had been eavesdropping on since last month, waiting for it to spiral out of control because America wasn't for Soonyoung, wasn't for him. So he was selfish. It was only fair; Joshua was the one who got them in this mess in the first place.

(And Junhui would blow smoke in his face for Wonwoo to use as an excuse for his tears. They all said yes at first. They all wanted out. It took too long to realize that there was no way out, not really, and anywhere they go, it would just be the same hell all over again. Belonging was as much of a dream as home was. He was sorry for Joshua, for Soonyoung, for Junhui, and as his selfish ego dictated—for himself.)

"I'm so sorry," Soonyoung murmured in defeat. Wonwoo saw his hand twitch in Joshua's direction, wanting to reach in an attempt to salvage whatever was left of them but much like the water in the kettle, the pot, their drugs and the gas in this very canister Junhui was passing to him—they were empty.

"No," Joshua assured him with as much neutrality as he could muster, "no, no. It—it's alright. I expected this but—to hear it is. Well." He laughed. "I can't say I'm surprised."

If Soonyoung walked around like a man on parole, Joshua was like one with a death sentence hanging over his head. The livid force of him treading back from the police station had morphed into an unrecognizable limp, impeding his movements through their collective existence as the dorm's hallways square in on his now impossibly narrow shoulders, the slight of his feet as they tiptoed across hushed whispers and new groups of kids identifying themselves as _beatniks_ , smoking pot that he didn't supply.

And where did that leave Wonwoo and Junhui? The jury, he wanted to think, in all their passivity. But they both knew each other too well. The court had failed and with this system slipping through his hands so did everything else.

Wonwoo penned that in. Thirty-eight poems, one of which was about courts. All of them about loss.


	7. Interlude (III)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wanna say ive the ending all sorted out but that would be yk. A Lie. (HAAAAAAAAAAA)
> 
> disclaimer i have never read a beat era book ever.   
> (uwu)

**Interlude (III)**

 

 

**October 1949**

Joshua's eyes were bloodshot and puffy, all punch-drunk on the laughter reverbing about the room and horns begging for their eviction. "C'mon, it's not a party unless you get high, Watson!"

"Watson?" Wonwoo was intrigued, but wary of the odd glassware in Joshua's loose grip. The water within sloshed wildly as if understanding his inner panic.

"Yeah, Watson!" Soonyoung was cracking up in the corner of the room, Junhui holding onto his legs as the former reenacted their Shakespeare readings—red in the face, red in the eyes, heart in, heart out. Wonwoo was barely drunk. "Jeon Wonwoo, John Watson! I think it's charming and very you."

He took another swig of the cheap champagne. "Why can't you just call me Wonwoo?"

"No, listen," Joshua forced them to drop down, floor crashing against his tailbone and sending Wonwoo's spine shrieking. "Listen, listen—it's now Joshua, Jerry, Sawyer, and you—Watson. It's all fun!"

"There's nothing wrong with keeping Wonwoo, now, is there?"

His face was quickly swept up in a firm, almost harsh, embrace; cheeks cupped within Joshua's smooth palms. A stare, Wonwoo caught, a gaze. Something tender like mothers, something possessive like fathers. Something vicious like a brother and yet visceral—almost like a lover. Like a lover should be. Like how Joshua probably looked upon the boys and girls throwing themselves onto him. _Is this the lover's gaze—_

A voice, whispered in the inches of distance between their foreheads knocked together, noses touching. "You know I wouldn't want anything bad to happen to you, Wonwoo-yah."

 

 

**August 1952**

"You can't save everyone, Shua."

The issue with being someone so busy was that he knew he couldn't, but he had to try anyway. His hands itched—perpetually. He had to control. Control provides a steady foundation and would keep things from tumbling. Control was everything when anything could be destroyed so easily and thus, only one person should be in control, and if anyone had to take the fall it would be him. Just him alone, one person, he would—

"You know he's been taking your excess stock."

Junhui sat tensely in Joshua's bed, beautiful even when flustered in his ratty wifebeater and boxers. Junhui was beautiful because Joshua knew he loved him, they loved each other, and he didn't want Junhui to talk to him so directly, right when he was at his most vulnerable as if the whole conversation was premeditated and Junhui attacked first. Joshua thought he deserved better than this, and Junhui deserved better than being his personal life janitor, mopping after his past mistakes.

(Though he didn't know if he even had the right to consider what he was deserving of and what wasn't.)

"They don't want to stay here."

"I know."

And Joshua knew he couldn't do anything about it, not when the plan had set itself in motion against him. He let it all run under the bridge; another day, another deal. An old acquaintance from BTP had just called him up for a freshers' deal. It was a ludicrous amount of money for an operation so simple, and Joshua told Junhui to tell BTP that yes, they would be there. Junhui then told Wonwoo who told Soonyoung that yes, they would be there.

The war was approaching its end, and Soonyoung's fingers drummed against surfaces in a beat similar to Joshua's own, each tap on wood a second gone from their countdown. This deal might as well be their last hurrah together. The _beat_ movement was catching on and dying out; Huncke was imprisoned, Kerouac too busy basking in his new oddly-found fame, and Ginsberg was packing for San Francisco. New York was done, and Joshua couldn't help but bite his nails until Junhui pulled them away from his starving mouth, fleeing from the journalism club's rogue keeners.

"Let me rephrase that," Junhui said, determined and steely for how gentle he was with Joshua's damp fingertips. "You don't have to save everyone."

He nodded. Failure burned his throat clean anyway.

 

 

 _would you call our hatred_  
this overall loathing  
and   
failure,  
love?


End file.
